I’ve been surprised by the number of people who lived in total denial about who Barack Obama actually was throughout his entire administration, suddenly pointing out the ethical and demoralizing implications of his recent decision to accept $400,000 for a speech to Wall Street firm Cantor Fitzgerald.

For myself and countless others, the writing was on the wall from virtually day one when he appointed Wall Street sycophants Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers to senior positions within his administration. Then came the policies, which were even more generous to Wall Street than any cynic could imagine. I posted countless pieces on Obama’s cronyism throughout his Presidency, constantly referring to him as an oligarch-coddling fraud, which his record unquestionably confirms.

It wasn’t just Wall Street either. Although his protection and empowerment of that industry was particularly shameless, he coddled and elevated corporatism and cronyism generally throughout his eight years. As I observed in the 2015 post, Cronyism Pays – Eric “Too Big to Jail” Holder Triumphantly Returns to His Prior Corporate Law Firm Job:

Trying to determine Barack Obama’s most corrupt, crony appointee presents a virtually impossible task. Every single person he’s appointed to a position of power over the course of his unfathomably shady, violent and unconstitutional presidency, has been little more than a gatekeeper for powerful vested interests. Obama’s job was to talk like a marxist, but act like a robber baron. In this regard, his reign has been an unprecedented success.

So why am I writing about Barack Obama? He’s no longer President, and we once again face many of the exact same issues under President Trump. I’m addressing it because I think the fact so many people are finally having this conversation is a very good thing. We can’t have an honest dialogue about such an existential issue without admitting to ourselves the sad truth about who Barack Obama is.

While I certainly understand it would’ve been far more beneficial had many of these people faced reality years ago, we don’t get to decide when people come around to admitting to themselves the truth about a person they worshipped (as my screaming into the wilderness for eight years can attest).

Denial is an extremely powerful thing, and tens of millions of Democrats were completely bamboozled by Obama due to their personal obsession with the man. This is precisely why cult of personality worship is so dangerous and counterproductive when it comes to politics. We need to grow up as a culture and start supporting policies over people, logic over emotion. If you become attached to a politician or a political party like a sports team, that individual or institution can very easily manipulate and betray you. We see this over and over again, and until we move to a higher level of understanding about the world around us, we will continue to be victimized by disingenuous, opportunistic shysters.

Today’s post will highlight two excellent exposes of the real Barack Obama by two individuals who were not fooled by Obama’s soaring rhetoric and false promises, Matt Stoller and Jimmy Dore.

Obama, like Bush, is a Hamiltonian. He believed that those at the top of large concentrated financial institutions are experts, with top-tier credentials, and, therefore, rightful rulers. As Mr. Obama put it, Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JP Morgan Chase, and Lloyd Blankfein, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, were just “smart businessmen.”

Behind this is a deep moral debate that goes back hundreds of years, to the days of Hamilton and Nicholas Biddle. Since the Boston Tea Party revolt against the British East Indies Company’s attempted monopolization of the tea trade in 1773, Americans understood local commercial institutions as enabling key decisions to be made closer to the people who bore the costs of those decisions. Advocates of centralization, like Hamilton, believed that this was an unstable and weak model for how to craft a nation-state, and that a quasi-aristocratic class should rule.

The policy path of the Obama administration, like the Bush and Clinton administrations before it, and in some ways like Hamilton’s Treasury Department, was largely construed around aiding the big, and hurting the small. Local banks lost out during the crisis, as did community-oriented banks. Black-owned banks, for example, were ten times less likely to receive bailout money than non-black-owned banks. This hit at the individual level as well. People in foreclosure were treated with one set of rules, while large Wall Street firms with significant debt were treated with another.
https://medium.com/@matthewstoller/obama-the-hamiltonian-2a301d5c19ee

As all of you must know by now, my personal convictions and philosophical leanings call for the exact opposite approach.

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This Hamiltonian process of concentrating power was most obvious in the banking sector, but it is also part of an overall trend towards the monopolization of our commercial society and increasing control over our lives, our liberties, and our democracy by private financiers. Some within the Obama administration noticed problems towards the end of the administration. His administration challenged the Comcast-Time Warner merger and issued an executive order on monopoly. Antitrust chief Renata Hesse made a speech explicitly rejecting the modern pro-concentration treatment of antitrust. But this was far too little, loo late.

The open markets in which entrepreneurs thrive, in which workers have bargaining power, in which business is conducted honestly and effectively for the benefit of society, was fundamentally weakened during the eight years of the Obama administration, just as they had been during the Bush administration before it. The result is a bipartisan corrosive cynicism towards democracy,

Americans have been saying no to this for ten years. In 2006 and 2008, Americans threw the governing Republican Party out of power. In 2010 and 2014, they did the same to the Democrats, installing Obama in power. Then, in 2016, Donald J. Trump beat both 16 Republican candidates, and then Hillary Clinton. It’s hard to see these electoral tremors as anything other than a rejection of the moral framework of both party establishments.

For virtually his whole Presidency, President Obama operated according to a Hamiltonian worldview in which social justice and concentrated capital went hand-in-hand, where technocracy was seen as superior to democracy. It is that same moral vision that animated Obama in accepting nearly half a million dollars in speaking fee money. Obama was the damn President?—?he’s a smart guy, and yeah, this is who he should be spending time with and naturally this transfer of wealth is a just reward for him to live the lifestyle to which the virtuous class is entitled.

Obama’s good society was one in which a few actors in this class organize our culture using their power over our lives and liberties, because their virtue has enabled them to have the capital or credentials to do so. It’s why his policy agenda on the challenges of today’s political economy was education, early childhood education, and a higher minimum wage, rather than any means to liberate us from the concentrated financiers that organize our markets and our communities. They are doing this for our own good, for one day, maybe not you or me, but perhaps our children might be able to scratch and claw into this rarefied class. If, of course, they have the virtue and intelligence to do so.'

Many people believe in this system. Many don’t. But now we can actually have the argument in an honest way.

The entire post is excellent and you should read it in full and share. He makes the very critical point that we as a people cannot move forward until we admit to ourselves what this country has actually become. Perhaps a shattering of the Obama illusion for the millions of those who were until recently somehow still clinging on to the dishonest “hope and change” rhetoric can serve as a starting point for some real change. [....]

Y You are entirely cynical and without any sense of proportion, so you don't recognize wretched excess when you see it. Who is really paying Bush, and for what? That would clarify a lot.

That in seems to only apply to one...I fixed it for you.

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I think you live in a dream world if you think a couple of hours is worth that kind of money. There has to be more to it. I can't prove that. But if anyone thinks your point of view is 'appropriate', that's fine. It just makes one wonder just where the limits are, in your mind.

[i]
The limits in my mind are hard and easy to define. Is it legal? Can anyone link the past to the current ?

Probably yes and no.

Look, they all do this, all over the world and not just the Presidents although they seem to be the ones cashing in the biggest ...<cough cough...Clinton>

But add in Bush(s) , Obama Reagan Nixon....its the way it is.

Then throw in folks who are cashing in big time for their service to the public and you have Blair , Sarah Palin (surprisingly she can read and talk at the same time-although her fees have dropped significantly) Rudy Guiliani, Colin Powell ($200G's per speech) , Erskine Bowles (who??), Tim Geithner....

Big business and Wall St run things, we both know that of the US, and this is how they say thanks to people not coming down too hard on them when the seriously F-U.

The 2008 meltdown should have seen many being arrested for what was foisted on the public. But they werent, and for that.....here ya go, tells us some stories and cash this huge cheque.

Sadly for you, most Americans think it indicates a payoff. It plays a role in debunking the mystique that surrounds the first black president. It turns out that he's probably as bad as Al Sharpton, and what's not what Americans wanted.

The law is administered by lawyers, who are, by definition, people skilled at speaking out of both sides of their mouth, and who see politics as a profit opportunity.

The law, itself, defines the limits of tolerable bad behaviour. In our time it has illustrated an inability to control the crimes or senior political figures (Michael Bryant) or females (Jian Ghomeshi, Gregory Alan Elliott). Most cases never have a trial, but a negotiated deal is made, and it is singularly ineffective in fighting the vile drugs. It's becoming an embarrassing farce. But if that's your personal standard of right and wrong ... well, it's certainly a minimum standard.

I dont think its sad for me. Perhaps the Yanks are finally waking up? It has always been thus so not sure why anyone would get PO'd.

It sounds....sounds ...to me like its the right wing dismayed by Obama's largesse (not forgetting your link from the left being confused) wherein they sure werent when Bush(s) was locking up his monies. ( as an aside I have been more impressed by George and quietness since leaving office than I thought I would be)

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It plays a role in debunking the mystique that surrounds the first black president.

Oh I doubt that.

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It turns out that he's probably as bad as Al Sharpton, and what's not what Americans wanted.

Nice narrative but anyone thinking that is probably a small minded simpleton and or a racist prick.
(much the same of anyone who Trump=Hitler)

You overlook how Obama took advantage of an immense outpouring of good faith and hopefulness at the start of his administration. Despite the bungling of healthcare and his immigration policy, Americans liked him and his family, his personal style, and accepted what he was doing in a surprisingly uncritical way.

Bits of that were no doubt tarnished from the first days of his administration when it was announced that he had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize ... no doubt ... because he could always project himself as the guy who saved America from the dangers of economic collapse, thwarted at every turn by the Republicans. Even when he failed, his motives were good.

So he came out of his presidency with his legacy being widely rejected, but his personal popularity surprisingly high.

It was remarkable because his policies -- as represented electorally by the Democratic Part -- was massively rejected at the polls. In the first mid-term election they lost the House. In his re-election election, they got stymied in the Senate. Now they have lost control of the Senate. The Democrats have lost big at the state level as well. Yet Obama remained popular.

And in accepting these huge payments, some would say it sullies his reputation. Others might say that it reveals his real character. Nobody will start a petition to have him impeached.

Is it your impression that Obama didn't get America involved in wars? He claimed to get out of two of them, opening up the opportunity for ISIS to grow in the vacuum. Somehow, ISIS got American equipment, up to and including tanks, due to supposed miscues in the mercentaries they were hiring. And first thing you know, he has snatched defeat from the jaws of Victory in Iraq, and he still isn't out of Afghanistan. Hell, he isn't even out of Guantanamo.

He bombed the bejayzuz out of Libya, and drew a red line in the sand, so that now there's a migrant crisis all over Europe, A war rages in Syria, Libya is so Hobbesian that they are actually capturing people and selling them as slaves in markets. Do you want us to brand your title on his skin, sir? It doesn't cost extra.

And then he made the worst treaty ever with the Iranians.

He has mounted lots of drone strikes against people in Pakistan and Algeria. The list goes on. That's why his mystique is so important in understanding this -- no other politician in America could have gotten elected with his platform, and no other could get away with his antics in foreign affairs. The worst thing is that he's so bad at it.
So maintaining his mystique is central to his reputation, at least in the short run. That's why people feel that accepting these public bribes is foolish. He has enough money.

It seems we have done this topic to death. I find your responses are kind of ... well ... callow. You know, a mix of smart-alecky comments combined with a moral shallowness that is almost amusing. Thanks for sharing that with us.

Oh and by the way, if you want to use big words, please learn to use the correct ones. It makes one look silly when they dont.

You have me here ... what 'big words' are you referring to? Was it ''bejayzuz'?

So Michelle and Barrack made roughly $12 million each while in office? Not bad. That'd be about 1.5 million a year saved, on a salary of $400,000 a year. Pretty amazing.

Now he's weighing things ... $400,000 for a year's work as President, or $400,000 for a little talk with the guys at Goldman Sachs? Easy choice. I wonder what the Goldman guys tell their treasurer to justify the payment of what would otherwise be shareholder's profits?

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